GNU Stow is _great_ for this. I have the following in my dotfiles dir:

    [~/code/dotfiles]$ tree -a -R -L 2
    ├── aws
    │   └── .aws
    ├── git
    │   ├── .gitconfig
    │   └── .gitignore_global
    ├── .gitignore
    ├── .gitmodules
    ├── gpg
    │   └── .gnupg
    ├── README
    ├── ssh
    │   └── .ssh
    ├── tmux
    │   ├── .tmux
    │   └── .tmux.conf
    ├── vim
    │   ├── .viminfo
    │   └── .vimrc
    └── zsh
        ├── .oh-my-zsh
        └── .zshrc

I can then stow any of these into my home dir with:

    $cd ~/code/dotfiles
    $ stow -t $HOME git

That sets up a link from all the files in my home dir like:

    .gitconfig -> code/dotfiles/git/.gitconfig

I've looked at and read about other's experiences with stow in the past. I'm uncertain about this so please correct me where I am wrong, but the issues I see with stow are: 1. It's somewhat dated/may have a tail of legacy features 2. I'm unsure of it's value beyond of what can be provided via the Git Bare Repo solution linked in the intro of my post. 3. More importantly, it's not a programmable solution where you can override default files based on the current system. The main value proposition I see in my system is that I can define a single default configuration for, say, my terminal Alacritty, and override the configuration where necessary based on either my user, machine or role. Nix is a programming language, so I essentially have my system configuration managed via a programming language and can control things with a great level of detail.

I used stow for a long time but I changed to Ansible because I started outgrowing stow. Things can't at all / can't simply do with stow: - assemble different .ssh/config for different machines - different .zshenv, .zshrc - encrypt secrets in the git repo? - handle different operating systems condifitionally (can't source the same files on OS X than Linux) - can't install system-wide packages, which would be needed for dotfiles to work properly